Bartleby the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street

102 THE PIAZZA TALES
But Don Benito, apparently hardly yet completely restored,
and again interrupted by his cough, made but
some broken reply.
Soon his physical distress became so great, affecting
his mind, too, apparently, that, as if to screen the sad
spectacle, the servant gently conducted his master
below.
Left to himself, the American, to while away the
time till his boat should arrive, would have pleasantly
accosted some one of the few Spanish seamen he saw ;
but recalling something that Don Benito had said touch-
ing their ill conduct, he refrained ; as a shipmaster
indisposed to countenance cowardice or unfaithfulness in
seamen.
While, with these thoughts, standing with eye directed
forward toward that -handful of sailors, suddenly he
thought that one or two of them returned the glance
and with a sort of meaning. He rubbed his eyes, and
looked again but ; again seemed to see the same thing.
Under a new form, but more obscure than any previous
one, the old suspicions recurred, but, in the absence of
Don Benito, with less of panic than before. Despite
the bad account given of the sailors, Captain Delano
resolved forthwith to accost one of them. Descending
the poop, he made his way through the blacks, his
movement drawing a queer cry from the oakum-pickers,
prompted by whom, the negroes, twitching each other
aside, divided before him ; but, as if curious to see what
was the object of this deliberate visit to their ghetto,
closing in behind, in tolerable order, followed the white
stranger up. His progress thus proclaimed as by mounted
kings-at-arms, and escorted as by a Caffre guard of
honour, Captain Delano, assuming a good-humoured,
off-handed air, continued to advance ; now and then
saying a blithe word to the negroes, and his eye curiously